If we're talking Canada, I'd guess something out East, taking a shot at bandwidth caps (as, IIRC, the options are even worse on that side of the country). Gatineau/Ottawa area, maybe? Metro area there is pretty close to KC in both area and population.

Google shouldn't build anywhere else. At least not like the KC they've done.

Instead, they should offer to cities their expertise to build it, and open it up to other companies. Deliver 1Gbit/s to each house, and then allow various companies (cable, teleco, wireless, etc.) to offer services on top of that connection (tv, phone, internet, security systems, whatever else they want to get into) would bring about a new level of competition not seen ever. Municipalities would receive revenue, and use it to pay off the bonds they took out to pay Google to install it.

How is that different from what they did in KC: They provided the fast internet, and various companies are allowed to offer services over the internet.

Part of the problem with other providers is exactly that they offer (force, really) services (tv, phone, etc) that they pretend are not internet services, which allows them to charge ridiculous amounts. That is the very situation that you want to avoid.

I like the idea of an urban area next. Boston, NYC (particularly Manhattan island), and San Antonio all offer very logical and very different reasons. Boston, because of all the education in the area, NYC for the sheer weight of numbers, and San Antonio for defence and education reasons.

NYC would probably be my tip, if for no other reason than to get the program generating real income, and paying for itself and future development. If anything, that would be my way of doing it - rural, alternating with urban communities. Get every second one to be a profit making option, to keep things ticking along.

Its not like Google NEEDS the money, but it doesnt hurt to make it a self sustaining subsidiary.

No affiliations here, I'm in Australia. But we have a nationwide rollout of fibre happening at the moment, and its something they seem to be doing here as well - mixing urban and rural reasonably well. Not perfectly, but reasonably so.

But barring that, as far as potential to make a difference I think Detroit might benefit from it. I would expect there to be a fair number of unemployed factory workers and engineers that would benefit from jobs laying cable.

The other option might be just taking large shots at providers with ridiculously low bandwidth caps. For Canada, Toronto would be a nice shot at Rogers and 45mbit connection but 150gb bandwidth cap. What the hell is that? Thankfully I have Shaw who hasn't had said anything about my 300gb-600gb monthly usage.

I vote for Chicago, Des Moines, st. louis and Springfield. They are the closes metropolitan areas which could be tied into Kansas City. On top of the size and distribution of Chicago residents and businesses, there is a large number of high speed traders who you could possibly tap as initial investors. I haven't done the math but I would not be surprised if it would be a huge savings for them to buy multiple lines of google fiber over what they are currently using.

I like the idea of an urban area next. Boston, NYC (particularly Manhattan island), and San Antonio all offer very logical and very different reasons. Boston, because of all the education in the area, NYC for the sheer weight of numbers, and San Antonio for defence and education reasons.

NYC would probably be my tip, if for no other reason than to get the program generating real income, and paying for itself and future development. If anything, that would be my way of doing it - rural, alternating with urban communities. Get every second one to be a profit making option, to keep things ticking along.

Its not like Google NEEDS the money, but it doesnt hurt to make it a self sustaining subsidiary.

No affiliations here, I'm in Australia. But we have a nationwide rollout of fibre happening at the moment, and its something they seem to be doing here as well - mixing urban and rural reasonably well. Not perfectly, but reasonably so.

I'm not sure why you consider San Antonio to be "urban" but KC not. They have about the same # of people (~2M) and density.

The hell with rationale, they should come to where I live NYC.But I must say they have a big building here, and have a really big potential audience. The population density should allow for a economic deployment.

My guess is Oklahoma City or St Louis. From what I recall from that Netlfix ISP speed article, overall speed wont increase unless the entire network backbone is fiber. I can see Kansas City becoming a hub in their expansion plans.

. For Canada, Toronto would be a nice shot at Rogers and 45mbit connection but 150gb bandwidth cap. What the hell is that? Thankfully I have Shaw who hasn't had said anything about my 300gb-600gb monthly usage.

Boise, Idaho obviously. Fast growing smallish city with tons of room to grow.And there they have CableOne that has 50Mbps but 100GB cap. It was only 50GB not too long ago.

Obviously they should come to my town, Roeland Park, KS. Of course I am only a couple of blocks from County Line Rd,. across which resides the county of Wyandotte, the county of KCK. Oddly, over a year ago, a new cable provider, SureWest announced it was laying fiber in Roeland Park, to offer a cable provider alternative to the only other choice, Time Warner. Previously, SureWest had been in only two other locations in the country, Sacramento CA and the exurbs of KC on the Kansas side, in the wealthiest suburban county in KC, Johnson County, of which Roeland Park is the oldest and most northeastern suburb. It seemed odd that they were leap frogging from southwest exurbs to my more older and urban suburb. Untill the salesman showed up. He told me that SureWest was hoping to get bought out by Google. So then it made sense. SureWest is making a bet that Google is eventually going to hop over County Line Rd. Google has already announced that they are entering the Johnson County market, of course starting in another Johnson County northeastern suburb close to Roeland Park, but this one of a much different demographics; Mission Hills, KS, with a median income of nearly $200,000.

What start up companies has Google Fiber attracted so far? I followed the link, but it talks about an incubator that is willing to invest $6,000 per founder (up to a max of $18,000) in exchange for a 6% stake in the company, along with providing some training. But the businesses have to meet the needs of the Kansas business community and the incubator seems to have a very local mission.

The home for hackers is a nice idea, giving people a place to stay rent-free for 3 months. But I wonder if that doesn't have a bigger impact than the fast internet speed... any thoughts on how startups could benefit from Fiber?

Google, if you are reading this, ATLANTA NEEDS YOU. You put that fiber up here, people will drop the inferior ATT DSL and Comcast's over-priced cable like it was a 8-track player after being presented with a iPod.

The little known city of Warner Robins or Macon, GA would be very nice

Actually there is so logic in this. Macon is losing people in their city left and right due to crime...and demographics...and Warner Robins is gaining them. So building fiber in Macon would certainly draw people back into the city, regardless of the crime levels. And then, they might actually start bringing in enough taxes to pay for a police force to enforce the law. Unfortunately, the majority of people left in Macon are the 47% that have never paid taxes and only draw resources from the city/state/country.

Regardless, Fiber in Macon would turn it into a HUGE hub of growth. It is a very historic city. I mean...who wouldn't want to move to the "Home of the Almond Brothers"?

OK, that's an impossible question! Everyone has rationales for why where they live would be the best next place for Google Fiber...

I think the Boston area would be perfect. Boston isn't really that big, and the Rt. 128 corridor is the Silicon Valley of the East along w/ having tons of Universities, so Google fiber here would have an outsized impact on new Internet innovation.

See I told ya where I live is the best next choice for Google Fiber!

Cambridge would be a good choice, too. Tons of start-ups and people that work in the Internet industry or go to nearby universities. If they live in the area they have to go home to crappy Comcast "high speed" internet, 5 mbps/1 mbps.

I still say they would do well bringing Google Fiber to Brazil. The installation labor would be extremely cheap, they would be able to negotiate really good deals with the government since the desire to expand internet and computer access is high on the list of priorities (and has been for a while). Brazil will be hosting the upcoming soccer world cup and the upcoming olympics so there is already a lot of building going on meaning they should be able to dig down cables in lots of places for near zero cost. Finally the IT industry in Brazil is experiencing considerable growth and Google would do well to position itself to benefit from it and contribute to it.

The strongest economic effects may apply to first movers in the space. For instance, it's widely asserted that both Volkswagen and Amazon opened facilities in Chattanooga precisely because of the gigabit fiber that's cheaply available. Admittedly, the Amazon facility is just a warehouse, with shitty warehouse jobs, but the VW plant is kind of a big deal.

But once everyone has it, it won't be much of a competitive edge anymore, so I'd think cities would want to move quickly, if they could.

I saw an idea awhile back that cities should run at least two, and maybe three fibers to every house; this only costs them a tiny fraction more, as the labor is the great majority of the cost in running fiber, and this would allow them to rent (or even give away, if they chose) space on the city fiber network for private operators to offer service. This avoids the monopoly effect; EPB in Chattanooga will be devilish hard to compete with if you don't have fiber.

They seem like a great outfit to me, with smart and helpful customer service, and superb bandwidth, but, say, thirty years from now, will they still be this good? Having more fiber runs would help make sure that happened.

It was my understanding that when Google was deciding where to first put Fiber, they narrowed it down to Baltimore and KC. KC won, but shouldn't Baltimore be next? We have the entire Baltimore/DC metro area, which is a huge market.

They should come to UT and buy out the troubled UTOPIA ( http://www.utopianet.org/ ) network. There's a lot of infrastructure in place but the business is struggling. Perhaps Google can turn it around?

Detriot has already been mentioned, I would expand it to mid/major cities that have dire infrastructure problems. Most of those places should have relatively cheap labor costs and the local government is more likely to be amicable to the service.

I say throw it up on the I-80 corridor. A lot of the corridor is still dealing with dial-up, and when you do get cities they're laboring under a single broadband provider's thumb with subpar service. On the corridor itself: San Francisco/Oakland and Sacramento, Reno, Grand Island and Omaha, Council Bluffs, Des Moines, and Iowa City, Joliet, South Bend, Toledo, Cleveland, and then into the post-apocalyptic wasteland that is Pennsylvania and New Jersey (no major cities on I-80 in either state). Just off the corridor you have a ton of other (major) cities, of course.

i know you said "other than where i live" but seriously, they should bring it to rural vermont, where i live. it certainly wouldnt be the most profitable when it comes to subscribers/resources invested ratio but the places where those ratios are good already have fast internet. i have the fastest connection available at my house and it's DSL max D/L speeds around 350 kbps. give some love to those of us who not only enjoy the internet, but enjoy being surrounded by trees and wild animals instead of concrete and steel

I agree in spirit to this. I live in North Dakota, so I'm biased that way. I think rural areas in general should be a focus. Cities have access to fast internet speeds. Here in North Dakota there are areas still stuck in dial-up because there is no lines laid that can handle the higher speeds. Google could have the private version of the rural electrification project.

It seems like Des Moines, Council Bluffs, or Omaha would be the ideal next city for Google Fiber, especially with their video distribution center in Council Bluffs. Building out the rest of the Kansas City metro area would be great as well.

I honestly expect that, if Google fiber comes up here to Canada, Kitchener/Waterloo will be one of those cities at the top of the list. We've got a rapidly re-structuring city here that is just ripe for such a thing to happen, not to mention the fact that it's still a relatively smaller city.After that, well, I guess that I'd have to expect the usual cities to start seeing it... Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, etc

Detroit. They can buy it, bulldoze the whole bastard and build the city of the future.

Delta City?

*edit*Doh, someone beat me to it.

Anyway, my tuppence - I think Google needs to drop fiber in all the rural areas before they touch another metro area. Let's get the country wired up before we improve all the places that already have some form of broadband.

IntergalacticWalrus wrote:

Just cover the whole damn North America all at once. Everyone equally needs Google Fiber.